These works engage with the physical and linguistic infrastructures that tacitly and consistently affect the movement of individuals and objects. Structural systems originating in language exert a massive, pervasive influence on the body, and through their immensity become nearly invisible on the scale of the everyday. Inhabiting the forms of modular or serial barriers and landmarks, the work in this series responds to and reveals the forces at the intersection of the political and linguistic restriction.

Brute By the Foot1, acrylic on paper - 2014

Brute By the Foot2, acrylic on paper - 2014

Brute By the Foot3, acrylic on paper - 2014

Brute By the Foot4, acrylic on paper - 2014

Brute By the Foot5, acrylic on paper - 2014

Brute By the Foot, polyurethane foam, paper, acrylic, enamel - 2014

Brute by the Foot - the wording of the Schengen Agreement - which removed customs and border control between participating European nations - doesn't describe an abolition of internal European borders, but rather suggests the relocation of internal borders to Europe's frontier. As if 'borderness' was a finite resource - an extruded material that could be trucked along highways and reinstated elsewhere. The play-doh fun factory version of border control.

Gilead then cut Ephraim off from the fords of the Jordan, and whenever Ephraimite fugitives said, 'Let me cross,' the men of Gilead would ask, 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he said, 'No,' they then said, 'Very well, say "Shibboleth" (שבלת).' If anyone said, "Sibboleth" (סבלת), because he could not pronounce it, then they would seize him and kill him by the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell on this occasion.

—Judges 12:5-6, NJB.

A shibboleth is a linguistic test that determines admittance to an insider group based on one's ability to imitate speech. The word is the barrier and also the key. The strategy of access is mimicry. Like building a door to get through a door.